Erika Kirk’s brief hand signal onstage at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where tens of thousands gathered Sunday to mourn her husband Charlie Kirk, ignited swift online speculation about what she meant. Video from the service shows Donald Trump embracing the widow at the close of his remarks, pointing toward a giant image of the slain activist and stepping back as she lifts her right hand with thumb, index finger and pinky extended, the remaining two fingers folded toward her palm. The gesture, captured from multiple angles in broadcast clips and social posts, circulated within minutes; by evening, commentators were debating whether she had flashed a political symbol, a pop-culture “rock on” sign, or the American Sign Language expression for “I love you.”
The sequence is visible in Fox News’ stadium footage and in a Times of India video segment that cuts from Trump’s hug to Kirk’s upward glance and raised hand. The Times of India caption describes it as a “mysterious hand sign” and notes the posture—thumb, index and pinky extended—as the moment the debate began. Hindustan Times published a write-up summarizing the same images and quoted a prompt to xAI’s Grok bot that asked what the hand sign meant; the bot answer, reproduced by the outlet, listed competing crowd interpretations ranging from “47,” a reference used by some supporters to signal a second Trump presidency, to a generic “horns” or “rock” sign. The clip itself contains no spoken explanation from Kirk, and neither she nor event organizers issued a statement about the gesture.
Sign-language references make clear that the handshape Kirk used—thumb, index and pinky extended with the middle and ring fingers folded—matches the widely recognized American Sign Language “I love you” (often called the “ILY”) sign, which blends the finger-spelled letters I, L and Y into a single hand position. “The three initials of I, L, and Y handshapes are blended into the standalone ILY handshape with the thumb, index finger and pinky extended,” explains Handspeak, an ASL dictionary and learning site. Another guide, Lingvano, instructs: “To sign I love you in American Sign Language (ASL), point out your thumb and index finger to form an ‘L’. While keeping them extended, lift your little finger.” Dictionary.com’s reference entry for the “love-you gesture” emoji gives the same description: “a raised index finger and pinky (little) finger and an extended thumb.”
Authoritative resources also distinguish the ILY handshape from look-alike signs in music and sports culture. The Helen Keller National Center’s handshape guide lists the “I/L/Y” with thumb extended and separately describes the “corna” or horns handshape, where “the index finger and little finger are extended… and the thumb is tucked over the closed fingers.” In other words, the thumb’s position is the easiest way to tell them apart: out for ILY, tucked for horns. Wikipedia’s article on the ILY sign, citing Deaf-culture histories, makes the same point and traces the gesture’s mainstream diffusion since the 1970s. The pattern aligns with what Kirk did onstage: her thumb is extended.
The setting supplies additional context to the reading. A few minutes before the hug, Kirk delivered the day’s most quoted lines, telling the stadium, “That young man… I forgive him,” a reference to the 22-year-old accused of killing her husband during a campus appearance in Utah on 10 September. She said she was acting “because it was what Christ did, and it’s what Charlie would do,” remarks that drew a prolonged ovation. ABC7’s live blog and other outlets recorded those words and described the crowd’s response. In that frame—a widow declaring forgiveness and then, moments later, raising a hand toward her husband’s image—the ASL ILY reading coheres with the most literal gloss: “I love you.”
The memorial, a hybrid of religious service and political rally, complicated the visual vocabulary on display, which helps explain why the clip became contested in the hours after it aired. Some viewers, primed by a day of partisan rhetoric, saw a political cipher. Hindustan Times’ summary highlighted users who argued the gesture signified “47,” shorthand in some corners of the American right for a Trump return to the White House. Others insisted they saw the “rock” or “devil horns” sign, a staple of concert culture. But the hand shape visible in the stadium video matches the standard ILY configuration, not the tucked-thumb horns—an anatomical detail that remains constant across photos and recordings from the floor.
While the moment that triggered the debate was silent, Kirk has spoken extensively in recent days about the meaning she ascribes to symbols of her husband. In an interview published Sunday, she said she has been wearing the blood-stained St. Michael pendant medics removed from Charlie Kirk’s neck as they tried to save him. “I’m wearing it now,” she told the New York Post, describing the chain as a comfort in grief and recounting memories of threats her husband received in the year before the shooting. The gesture onstage followed Trump’s point upward toward the stadium image of her husband; she looked to the photo and lifted the ILY handshape. Neither that interview nor her eulogy included a verbal explanation of the sign, and there is no indication investigators or event officials considered it political messaging.
The difference between the competing readings is not merely academic. In American Sign Language, hand orientation and finger position convey distinct meanings; a single digit or a turned palm can shift a sign’s sense. Handspeak’s entry stresses that “ILY” is a stand-alone handshape used to express affection and solidarity. Lingvano notes its mixing of letters and counsels directing the sign toward the person intended as the recipient. It is precisely because the handshape has bled into mainstream usage—including on T-shirts, emojis and sports sidelines—that viewers often conflate it with horns. The Helen Keller National Center’s side-by-side definitions of “I/L/Y” and “corna” are designed to prevent that confusion; the latter is explicitly defined with a tucked thumb. Video from State Farm Stadium shows Kirk extending hers.
The service’s closing minutes also featured other gestures that spurred commentary. Elon Musk, seated near Trump earlier in the program, was photographed with hands clasped in a diamond-like “steeple” some callers labeled a “pyramid” sign; the Times of India tech desk catalogued those reactions in a separate item and noted that such a pose has widely varying, non-standardized readings in public life, from the “Merkel diamond” to idle hand placement. That parallel chatter likely boosted attention to Kirk’s movement a short while later, when cameras returned to the floor for Trump’s embrace and her glance toward Charlie Kirk’s image.
By late evening, Australian site News.com.au’s rolling live coverage was describing the same clip explicitly as an “I love you” gesture in sign language, a formulation also adopted by several broadcasters in live-update pages that compiled notable moments from the memorial. The Washington Post’s highlight reel showed the embrace and the stadium tableau, although it did not attempt to label the hand sign; the Post’s text wrap emphasized the day’s juxtaposition—Kirk’s message of forgiveness followed by Trump’s combative remarks—without parsing gestures. Those conventional editorial choices reflect a broader newsroom tendency to avoid assigning meaning to silent signals unless the subject confirms it. In this case, the anatomy of the handshape itself provides the clearest reading available.
The background to Kirk’s appearance is familiar by now. Prosecutors in Utah have charged a 22-year-old with aggravated murder and other offenses in the killing and say they intend to seek the death penalty; he is being held without bail pending further hearings. The memorial blended prayer and politics: Trump promised to award Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously and told the crowd he “hate[s] [his] opponents,” lines that drew cheers and criticism in equal measure. Those lines came after Kirk’s own message, which ABC7 recorded as a straightforward declaration of grace and left to stand largely on its own. The gesture in question occurred after Trump called her back to the stage and before the program ended with “America the Beautiful.”
Absent a direct statement from Kirk about what she intended, the most conservative journalistic conclusion is also the most literal one supported by the record: the handshape she used is the ASL “I love you” sign, defined by ASL dictionaries as thumb, index and pinky extended, and distinguished from the horns sign by its extended thumb. The orientation—raised toward her husband’s image immediately after a public vow of forgiveness—fits that meaning. Claims that she flashed a coded political slogan are not substantiated by any on-the-record explanation from her or by the anatomy of the sign itself. As of Sunday night, the only documented interpretations from reputable references point to an expression of love in sign language, not a partisan message.
The video will continue to circulate in a polarized environment, and observers will bring their own filters to a silent, easily memed frame. But the elements that can be stated with certainty are simple. Trump and Erika Kirk embraced onstage at the end of his address; he pointed toward a stadium-sized photograph of her husband; she looked up, then raised a hand with thumb, index and pinky extended and the other fingers folded; the clip spread quickly, spawning speculative captions; and, by the plain standards of ASL reference works, her handshape corresponds to the “I love you” sign. Everything else—the intent behind it and any message she wanted the crowd to take away—remains with the widow who, earlier in the same program, had told the nation, “I forgive him.”